A tiny iridescent fly
lands before me
on the green waxy leaf
of my Mexican Orange shrub.
Does she sense the chaos and poison
of the human sullied world?
Does the hearty Mexican Orange?
We are all subject to
the inescapable warming
of our home,
the growing scarcity of water,
the countless toxins
us humans have spewed upon
every one of us.
Are the foraging fly
and her vibrant shrub host
spared awareness of this crime?
Is their ignorance excused
by the innocence of just standing by?
If so, it may be the closest they come
to immunity.
The fly, by its own nature,
will die soon enough,
but the eight foot, twenty-year-old shrub
will likely face some ravages of our
overstepping our ecological boundaries.
And few, if any, will notice,
or care.
Until we humans get past
the notion
that this world was made for us,
we will keep wreaking havoc
on all our relatives,
whether they discover the fix
or not.
Some are wiser than us,
but not as scheming.
The vainest and meanest among us
conspire to hoard and rule
and leave the rest of us to waste away.
But some of us see
the gifts and wisdom
of our relatives –
the empathy of elephants,
the skill of beavers,
the collaboration among ants,
the nurturing of wolves,
the creativity of the Bowerbird,
the keen mind of the octopus.
If we step out of the way
and drop our weapons,
the wiser ones may just
lead us to care and sanity.
